The King is Dead

Duty

Shouto thinks he's learned a few names now- Bakugo is the angry blonde. Deku turned out to be Midoriya. He's not sure which one of the girls is Asui and which one is Uraraka, but Brunette and Frog girl work for now. Shouji is Octo-arms, Birdguy is Tokoyami.

On the way to camp, guarding Bakugo, they came across the two girls. They were up against another villain, Shouto's only counted two but he thinks Midoriya must've gone up against one with how his arms are broken. That makes at least three. They haven't come across any more unconscious students, which means someone is either picking them off and carrying them to camp, or they're being kidnapped, or they caught onto the gas quickly enough to get away. If this is the League then they have that vortex guy, so they might have more students than Shouto wants to think about.

And they managed to get both Bakugo and Tokoyami. Shouto should've heard something. He should've been paying attention. He should've been able to react before the villains did. He's been taking it too easy for the past months and without father, there's nobody to punish him. Maybe he should do it himself.

Now they're standing in front of more villains, one that's dressed like a high schooler, one that looks like he jumped out of a comic book, and another that has father's eyes. Blue fire surrounds them and the gas is long gone, one of the other students must've taken care of it.

"Give him back!"

The comic book villain is shouting in high and low tones and launches himself at Midoriya and Shouji, dodging arms and knives from his teammate.

What scares him is that the man in the trench coat is staring at him. It feels oddly familiar, like he should know. It's just because he has blue eyes. That's all. It can't be more.

"Todoroki Shouto."

Shouto clenches a fist, readying his ice to attack the villain. He has to be the one that set these fires, these blue fires. Blue fire is stronger and hotter than Shouto's, his flames won't do much against the direct blast of them.

"You beat me at my own game, and neither of us knew you were playing." The villain smirks, his scarred mouth pulling into a fucked up smile.

Shouto doesn't have any more time to focus on that when there's blue flame coming at him, his ice melts under the direct heat. It burns his skin and he has to back up not to be roasted alive.

When the flames finally give up, he realizes the point of the attack wasn't for offense, it was a strategy to blind Shouto, and now the villain is tackling him. His face is pressed into leaf-covered dirt, singed and hot from fire. Shouto punches upward but his arm is grabbed and twisted behind him.

Father used to do this to him... next would be-

He holds back a scream as his arm pops from his shoulder. It's so familiar and he thinks this is a good punishment. If Aizawa-Sensei or Hizashi won't do it, let the villain.

But he still has to fight.

He sets himself on fire, orange flames overtaking blue in anger and pain. The man on top of him backs away, laughing at Shouto's attack like it was made to be comedic.

Shouto blasts fire at the guy, since he seems to have a weakness for it despite his own quirk. His body must not know how to handle heat, which would explain the scars.

He thinks about father's training. Going up against fire was never easy for him, since his quirk was split in half he had more to focus on. Ice was weak against heat, his fire was never strong enough to beat father's, and this fire is stronger than father's. His quirk isn't a good match for fire. He can blast flames all he wants,
try ice traps all he wants, but his work will be fought with more fire. So what does he do?